Thursday, January 19, 2017

BBC - Arron Banks launches Drudge-like anti-establishment website

I can reveal that Westmonster is co-owned by Michael Heaver, former press adviser to Nigel Farage. The 27-year-old, who together with Mr Banks will own 50% of the website, will edit it day to day.

Modelled on the Drudge Report, the American aggregator site that generates huge traffic, Westmonster will be powered by the social media reach of Leave.EU, the campaign to which Mr Banks gave close to £7m - the largest donation in British political history.

Leave.EU has nearly 800,000 followers on Facebook and Mr Heaver believes he can use that base to generate substantial traffic from day one.

Westmonster will publish some original news, and Mr Heaver hopes to enlist more celebrity writers than backbench MPs.

The site will launch with an article from Nigel Farage, and Mr Heaver is open about wanting to ape the opinionated, anti-establishment, highly provocative tone of Breitbart. ...